Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Tomorrow Never Knows

More than a decade ago, when we published ''The Experts Speak,'' Christopher Cerf and I did not claim that the experts were always wrong in predicting the future. It was just that in our work we had never uncovered any accurate predictions. However, our critics have argued persuasively (we are nothing if not humble) that some prognosticators are right as much as half the time. Hence our conclusion: Prediction is at best an unpredictable business.

How then to assess the accuracy of predictions of things to come? Any serious assessment of P.C. (prediction correctness) ought to look at the record of the past, which is what we did, beginning with science, a domain where logic, experimentation and empirical evidence prevail. An exemplar in this field was William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, the celebrated British physicist, inventor and president of the Royal Society at the end of the 19th century. In 1895 Lord Kelvin observed that ''heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.'' In 1897 he found that ''radio has no future'' and in 1900 he assured his scientific colleagues that ''X-rays are a hoax.''

Detractors of our study might try to claim that Lord Kelvin was unrepresentative that he was, to put it gently, no Einstein. But then it was none other than Dr. Albert Einstein who in 1932 made it very clear that ''there is not the slightest indication that $(nuclear$) energy will ever be obtainable. That would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.''

Of course, as objective scholars we would not want to rely on the idiosyncratic author of the theory of relativity. Thus we have supplemented our studies of scientists with a survey of forecasting in the no-nonsense world of big business, where serious decisions are based on market research. Perhaps the quickest way to encapsulate our findings here is simply to cite Thomas Watson, the hardheaded founder of IBM, who in 1943 said, ''I think there is a world market for about five computers.''

And where science and business intersect, the chances of casting light on the future are even dimmer. ''When the Paris Exhibition closes,'' the Oxford University professor Erasmus Wilson said in 1878, ''electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.''

As a public service, then, we are pleased to provide some guidelines for deconstructing your favorite futurologists.

Beware of those who make projections based on statistics.

We can demonstrate, er, statistically that those who argue from the numbers should be taken no more seriously than the Yale economist Irving Fisher, who said in 1929 that ''stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.'' Within weeks, values plummeted by $26 billion, heralding the start of the Great Depression.

Do not be blinded by the prestige of the source.

It was the visionary designer Buckminster Fuller who in 1966 predicted that by the year 2000, ''Amid general plenty, politics will simply fade away.'' And it was the noted Harvard sociologist David Riesman who declared in 1967 that by the turn of the century, ''If anything remains more or less unchanged, it will be the role of women.''

Optimistic predictions should be viewed with special suspicion.

Perhaps Alexander Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Corporation, was onto something when he predicted that ''nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years.'' He predicted that 40 years ago and the world is still waiting.

Ditto for pessimistic predictions.

On assuming the post of British Astronomer Royal in January 1956, Richard van der Riet Woolley said, ''Space travel is utter bilge.'' Our databank also shows that in 1957 the editor in charge of business books at Prentice Hall turned down a manuscript on the new science of data processing because: ''I have traveled the length and breadth of the country, and have talked with the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.''

''Fads'' have a way of sticking around long after those who call them that are gone.

The president of Michigan Savings Bank advised Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Company, because ''the horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty a fad.''

Career counseling is one thing, but career prediction is something else entirely.

''You ain't goin' nowhere, son -- you ought to go back to drivin' a truck,'' Jim Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, said when he fired Elvis Presley after one performance, Sept. 25, 1954.

And in 1931 Paul von Hindenburg, president of Germany, is reported to have said of Hitler that he was a queer fellow who would never become chancellor; the best he could hope for would be to head the Postal Department.

There is no accounting for taste.

Take, for example, Darryl F. Zanuck's 1946 observation that television won't last, because ''people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.'' Or the MGM executive Irving Thalberg's advice to Louis B. Mayer on the movie ''Gone With the Wind'': ''Forget it, Louis. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.''

And finally, watch out for

futurists who proclaim the end of the future.

It was, after all, that deep thinker Henry Adams who assured us in 1903, ''My figures coincide in fixing 1950 as the year when the world must go to smash.''